Thursday, 21 February 2013

Games for Kids - Tsuro.

So yesterday I left my nerd comfort zone and travelled to Burton and visited a fine store called "Spirit Games". A simply wonderful trove of all sorts of roleplay and board games, needless to say I over spent but it does mean I have some interesting new games to show you over the next few weeks.

However I digress. Once we were home from Burton I broke out my current favourite casual game (i.e. one that takes less than half an hour) for my sisters and I to play.

One of the Dragons.

In Tsuro players take control of ancient dragons as they find their path
through the oriental mists. players take turns playing tiles that have
line patterns on them and moving their dragon along these lines. Players
are eliminated when they are forced to leave the board on their path,
or when they collide with another dragon. The last dragon on the board
wins.

On the left is one of the Tsuro tiles. Players choose a starting location on the board that lines up with one of two lines that exist per space. The lines on these tiles then match up with these to form the "path" as shown below.

So we began playing, both of the girls picked up the concept of playing tiles very quickly and seemed to be doing well in the early turns. Inevitably in every game of Tsuro however dragons will get closer to each other. This is where they seemed to struggle as the visualisation skills needed seemed forgein to them. My girlfriend, who was playing with us, eventually won and my youngest sister and I dropped out first in an epic crash. Once we were done I asked the girls what they thought, "boring" and "a bit confusing" were my answers. I'm a little disheartened as I thought Tsuro would make a good family game but I think the higher levels of play are too difficult, certainly for younger children.